Business

Democratic Senator Michael Bennet says Congress needs to “set aside politics” and renew a popular wind energy production tax credit that expires at year’s end. Tens of thousands of jobs are at stake, and according to Sen. Bennet time is running out.

Not all that long ago, many Americans thought of Chinese food as fried rice, chow mein and orange chicken. And one reliable place to find it was at the mall, at places like Panda Express.

But food court mainstay Panda Express is now in the midst of a major transformation. That means moving from mall basements to stand-alone restaurants and keeping pace with an increasingly sophisticated American palate.

"It was my entryway into Chinese food," says Devin Niebrugge a bit wistfully. The 23-year-old California transplant is enjoying a late lunch at a Panda Express in Washington D.C. "I feel like you start with Panda Express and when you start to like that, then you go to the more local Chinese restaurants and experiment a little more."

Have you ever opened your mail and found a traffic ticket sticking you with a not-so-small fine? If so, your reaction might well have been, "What the [expletive]?"

Then maybe you looked carefully at the enclosed photo and realized the vehicle shown (allegedly) running a red light or speeding was, in fact, yours.

Join the outrage coming from hundreds of communities using red-light and speed cameras, which, to many an angry driver, seem to be lurking everywhere. Automated photo enforcement has gained wide support among local officials as a proven method of reducing collisions and enforcing traffic laws, freeing officers to respond to more serious crimes.

There were 4.3 percent more existing homes sold in January than in December, and the 4.57 million annual rate was the highest since May 2010, the National Association of Realtors reports.

Sales have gone up three of the past four months.

Reuters notes, however, that "the tenor of the report was weakened somewhat by a sharp downward revision to December's sales data to show only a 4.38 million-unit rate rather than the previously reported 4.61 million-unit pace."

(Scroll down for several updates and the document prosecutors filed today.)

Federal prosecutors in Charleston, W.Va., have filed the most serious criminal charges yet in the April, 2010, coal mine explosion that left 29 mine workers dead.

The conspiracy charges reach into the management ranks of Massey Energy and signal an effort to seek evidence against higher-level executives.

A "criminal information" accuses Gary May, a former superintendent of Massey's Upper Big Branch coal mine, of conspiring "with others known and unknown" to "hamper, hinder, impede, and obstruct the lawful enforcement ... of mine health and safety laws" at the mine.